FSB and Police Informers in Russia Now to Get Pensions

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 5 – Those who serve as informers for the Russian secret police will now receive pensions, according to a new law.  By this action, Vladimir Putin simultaneously corrects a shortcoming in Soviet legislation – until now, informers couldn’t count their “service” toward a pension – while offending ordinary Russians who see their own pensions as being at risk.

            “Rossiiskaya gazeta” has published the text of a new law that means those who work as informers for law-enforcement organs will be able to count that toward the receipt of the pension and that the various organs will be required to pay into the government’s general pension fund (rg.ru/2015/07/03/zuchok.html).

            This change in Russian law should make it even easier for the FSB and other police agencies of the Russian state to recruit informers and thus help Putin not only fight crime and terrorism, the ostensible reasons for expanding such networks, but also spread fear of secret surveillance to an ever-larger segment of the population.